The cast of The Real Housewives of New Jersey stopped by the Today show this morning to chat with Hoda and Kathie Lee about what we can expect this season.
Kathie Lee points out right away that Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga are peacefully sitting side by side. She asks if there has been any thawing between the volatile sisters in law. Teresa shares, "we're in a good place now. When you watch the show you'll see how we got there. You'll see our journey." Melissa chimes in with, "it was a long road to get to where we are. When see us in the premiere, you see us how we left off at the reunion." So, expect fighting and hostile insanity.
Kathie Lee asks what initially caused the rift between them. Melissa says it was "the whole strippergate thing and the set up" and Teresa jokes that it was all over "sprinkle cookies".
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Hoda asks them how long they didn't speak, when they tell her it was over a year, she throws a little shade. "That's an ice out..who does that?" Oh Hoda, you have no idea. Teresa says, "it was two Christmases without my brother and that never happened before, so it was sad."
They move on to Jacqueline Laurita and talk about her son's autism diagnoses. Jacqs says "season 4 was all about that whole time my son was regressing and we suspected that's what it could be. We got the diagnoses after season four stopped airing and since then that's been our main focus."
Hoda asks "it's hard to live that out in life, much less on TV – do you regret it?" Jacqueline doesn't. "No, because we've been on TV, not only is it bringing awareness to autism but people are reaching out to us and our son. Giving us a lot of support and treatment options and tools to use to help him".
Hoda turns to Caroline Manzo next, "Caroline, you're kind of the wise one in the group. you've seen it from the beginning. How has the group evolved and changed over the years?" Caroline shares, "it's a crazy dynamic because there's so much history between us all and the feelings are very deep. It really is a roller coaster that as I sit here right now, I can't say that we'll be sitting here in a year from now in the same good place because there's so much going on between us all, deep stuff."
Caroline continues, saying that the show is actually a good lesson for families. "People like to poke fun of our show, and I see it differently. I see it that we are a show you can really learn from. take the good and the bad from it. and we are a group of women that's are American families. I defy anybody to say that they don't have the issues we have somewhere in their life." Ah yes, we can all relate to bankruptcy on our million dollar mansions and throwing ten thousand dollar parties, right?
Kathy Wakile gets a little screen time when Hoda addresses her temper. "Kathy you seem like the calm one and every now and then you totally explode on the show." Kathy admits, "it's just once in a while i reach my boiling point. You try to keep it under wraps, but sometimes it happens…"
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Updated with photos of Caroline now!
Photo Credit: Ray Tamarra/Getty Images and D Dipasupil/Getty Images for Extra
